posted Sep 13th, 2006 - The NSL News story on September 9 mentioned that one of the event photos, provided by ESL Director Willy Boeykens, enjoyed special attention. The conclusion of the photo mystery is the fact that the Fun Flag was flying high in the packing and event hangar of the Spa Skydiving Center, Belgian host of the ESL Championship 2006.

There were rumors that the Fun Flag was stolen by Belgian competitors at the World Meet 2006 in Germany. In fact, the NSL News had even video evidence of the incident. The NSL News story on August 8 included a link to the Fun Flag video.

The stories of the Fun Flag created general curiosity in the NSL audience as of its meaning and history. The NSL News mentioned the Fun Flag several times in different event stories of the past years. However, the National Skydiving League was not even born when the story began, and the NSL website has not reached back far enough yet to get to the very beginning of the Fun Flag history.

Omniskore's Wagner family members Chris and Tim know much more and have been offering this information of the Fun Flag history at the Omniskore website. Chris Wagner, former 8-way world champion with the Golden Knights, wrote the first part of the story, which was later continued by his brother Tim.

The "Fun Flag" - The History of a Treasured Banner

Written by Chris Wagner

As best as I remember, and I've reached the point where I can claim diminishing memory because of advancing years if I get any points "confused", the Fun Flag first appeared at the 1985 World Meet in Yugoslavia (back when it was a "pink" communist single-state that produced such luxury items as the "Yugo") with the Canadian Delegation.

Anyway, the Canadian Delegation was notorious for its fun-loving antics; such things as getting obnoxiously drunk on the dinner-boat cruise and then singing "God Bless America" at the top of their lungs to shift blame, and planting "innocently incriminating" evidence in other delegations baggage while the Yugo Secret Police were clandestinely going through everyone's hotel rooms looking for the official FAI flag that had mysteriously disappeared shortly after everyone was warned not to touch it...

Have I mentioned yet how much it sucks to watch the World Meet live over the internet in lieu of being there?

But I digress. At some point at the close of the '85 World Meet, the Canadians presented the Fun Flag to the team they felt best represented it: The U.S. 4-way team "Air Bears" and its Team Captain, Tommy Piras. From this point on, it was traditional for the team possessing the Fun Flag to pass it on to another team at some opportune time. If fuzzy memory serves me, Tommy presented it the Golden Knights 8-way at the 1986 U.S. Nationals in Muskogee, after which we carried it to the '86 French Nationals in Lapalisse, the '86 British Army Nationals in Neatheraven, the '86 Australian Army Nationals in Tagooliwa, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific called Kwajelien, and the '87 US Nationals in Muskogee. In 1987 the Knights passed it on to another team - I think the French 4-way "TAG-Heuer", at the World Meet in Foz de Iguacu, Brazil. In 1988 it was passed back to the Knights at the 1988 World Cup in Vichy (where the World Meets of S&A and CF were also being conducted simultaneously). Sometime shortly thereafter I was engaged in a vodka-drinking contest with Alexander, Team Captain of "Blue Lightning", the Soviet 8-way team (yup, the same Alexander who's now coaching the Russian 8-way). After about 10 repetitions of: 1) drink large shot of vodka (or lighter fluid, I'm not sure), 2) slam down glass upside-down, 3) yell "HAH" at top of lungs while keeping the vomit reflex down, and 4) doing 20 push-ups, we somehow managed to figure out that we were stupid and I somehow managed to stagger the half klick back to the dorm where I called Mary while I was drunk for the one and only time, and remembered very little until boarding the plane for home the next day.

But I digress again. Have I mentioned yet how much it sucks to watch the World Meet live over the internet in lieu of being there? Anyway, at the 1989 World Meet in Ampuriabrava, Spain, several of us were lounging around the U.S.A. tent when we spotted a group of suspicious-looking skydivers walking our way, carrying something and wearing sheep-eating grins. As they got closer we recognized it was the Norwegian delegation (who always naturally look suspicious, but less so than the Canadians), and that they were carrying the Fun Flag. It seems that they had "borrowed" it at Vichy the previous year, and were now returning it, concerned that we had been worrying ourselves to death trying to find it. "Didn't we get presented the Fun Flag last year?" a fellow GK says; "Yeh, we did!" says another; and "So what are they doing with it?" says a third, followed by "No wonder I hadn't seen it all year!". The joke was on both our teams - we never even realized that it had been missing for an entire year!

Retrospect: World Meet 1989. Al Gore had just invented the internet just a few years previously, but there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. The Berlin Wall was still standing, East and West divided, and cracks were appearing in the political barriers between the two. The Soviet Team still traveled with "Chaperones," couldn't travel alone and had to make curfew (though I did drag Alexander downtown for a drink one night). Making overseas calls from a hotel telephone was virtually impossible (don't even think about getting an incoming call), and calls from official phone booths cost about the same as a jump ticket. When my daughter was born during official practice, the only way they could pass me the news was through the DZ fax machine. There was no OmniSkore, though its direct ancestor existed in DiveDraw, which the GK used for producing training rounds. Today, I can check the OmniSkore TIDBITS for up-to-date news, weather and sports; and even get the scores before they are officially posted, and call anywhere anytime dirt cheap on a cell phone.

I don't recall who we then passed it on to at the end of the '89 World Meet, we may have "officially" passed it on to Norway. I think we (the Knights) received it again at the 1990 European Cup in Gap, because I know we took it with us to the 1991 World Meet in Lucenec, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia): We flew it proudly beneath the U.S. flag on a pole lashed to the U.S.A. delegation trailer (I have a photo of it there). At this time it had no patches or other markings on it - it was still solid yellow with black letters, though a little frayed on the ends. It did have one "attachment": a white and red bikini-top flown in honor of the Canadian Judge's husband, who had just recently died in a skydiving accident (I am personally horrified with myself for not remembering their names).

I don't recall who or how we then passed it on to at the end of the '91 World Meet. Later, when I was able to visit the 1993 World Meet and the 2000 World Cup in Eloy, I made it a point to see if the Fun Flag was still being passed along and was happy to see that it was. It is probably long overdue for a history of the Fun Flag to be compiled and passed on along with the flag; I for one would be willing to donate a leather bound book for it's history to be preserved in and to be shared with future generations. While it is not the Ottley Sword in representing the Champions of RW/FS, it does represent the Champions of why we started skydiving in the first place.